Monday, February 4, 2008

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, a range of ideas from international disease relief, healthcare, security, climate change, extreme poverty, and the responsibility of market incentives, took the discussions in a new direction. Fmr. US vice-president Al Gore spoke of the need for a "marriage" of policy regarding extreme poverty and the climate crisis.

A big part of the reason is that sweeping economic trends, that encourage rampant industrialization of regions where economies are still deeply rooted in subsistence farming, and whose governments are broken by unfundable international debt, often leave the poorest people with little or no access to real economic benefits of any surge in investment.

Activist and musician Bono also spoke of his efforts to help reach the UN's Millennium Development Goals and the Gleneagles G8 aid pledges, amounting to some $50 billion in aid and debt cancellation. A fundamental principle of what might be called a 'unified Earth theory' for economic integration and socio-economic sustainability is that overcoming the severe drag of extreme poverty and environmental degradation will lead to widespread economic health across poorer and wealthier markets alike.

The focus of the forum presented in the embedded video is the ongoing effort to integrate hard scientific data and the most effective policies for reaching long-term solutions and moving world economic structures toward a prosperous, sustainable, open and accessible future.